Southern to reinstate some services in revised timetable

Southern train

Published:14:55Friday 15 July 2016

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Southern is set to add more services back into its revised weekday timetable on Monday (July 18) a week after it came into operation.

The rail operator, which is part of the Govia Thameslink Railway franchise, has been locked in a bitter dispute with the RMT union for months over the future role of conductors, with staff shortages leading to constant delays and cancellations.

A temporary weekday timetable was introduced on Monday (July 11), cancelling 341 services a day, leading to fury among affected passengers in places such as Seaford and Lewes.

But Southern is now looking to add more services back into the timetable from this Monday.

Alex Foulds, passenger service director for Southern, said: “Now that the revised timetable has had time to bed in, we have been able to fine tune the deployment of our available train crews to plug timetable gaps and provide additional capacity on some of the routes most affected.

“Although we are running fewer trains, we are providing greater certainty for commuters by concentrating our resources on providing a more reliable and punctual rush hour service. The journey to restoring the railway to a better level of performance still has some way to go but we are encouraged that the new timetable is a first step in that direction.”

According to the rail operator the revised timetable has ‘made a big difference to train punctuality’, with 80 per cent of trains arriving on time, compared to around 60 per cent before.